 Okay, well hello everybody. Just for purposes of those watching on recording I'll introduce myself. I'm Mel Hauser I use she they pronouns and I am executive director here at all brains belong. Welcome to brain club. Nice to see you all tonight on this rainy Tuesday. It rains every Tuesday. So tonight, we are going to be talking about one of our favorite topics here communicating and negotiating your access needs. This is brain club, our weekly community conversation about everyday brain life. Our educational space to educator about neuro diversity and topics related to inclusive community. Just we like to remind everyone up front that this is for education purposes only this is not a support group and it's not for medical or mental health advice. We name that up front just to have like clear clear and transparent context set, because we want to make sure that the topics that come up that are that that need medical and mental health advice are done in the context where people can have the right wrap around continuous support more so than we're able to offer here during brain club. All forms of participation are okay. As many of you have figured out you can have your video on or off. And even if it's on we don't expect anything of you we certainly don't need to look at the camera so feel free to do what needs doing. Walk, move around fidget, stim, snack, eat, whatever what whatever you need to take care of yourself, and everyone is welcome, and all formats of communication are welcome so you can unmute and use mouth words you can type in the chat. You can communicate however you are most comfortable. And in addition to affirming all aspects of identity it's really important that we respect and protect the groups collective access needs and we'll talk more about access needs in a moment. And we want to just make sure that if anyone feels uncomfortable for any reason. We do have direct messaging enabled Lizzie can you wave and introduce yourself. See here. Lizzie is our education programs coordinator so Lizzie's going to be able to see direct messages a lot junior than I will when I'm in shared screen mode so if you're uncomfortable for any reason please send a message to Lizzie as we can, we can support you and make arrangements for what you need. Okay, so yeah so just respecting and giving space for all participants. Alright, last bit of access. Close captioning is enabled, you just have to toggle it on if you'd like to use it, but depending on your version of zoom you might see the live transcript closed captioning icon. If not, choose the more dot dot dot and choose show subtitles and you can also do the same and choose hide some pedals if you want to turn them off. And that's the chat box is to the speech bubble icon, and that's, that's a week we leave this here as my visual support to remind myself to open the chats but I'll see when folks are using it. Alright, so we are here at our second week of August, our August team for the month is interdependence the idea of being connected to and relying on other people, which is so profoundly normal. So last week we talked about unlearning the myths of independence and how this has been independence has been overly glorified, you know, often since like early toddler hood, and so it's a lot of over rehearsed neural pathways that have to be unlearned. Because no, you should not have to do all the things by yourself, being connected to and relying on other people is part of neuro inclusive society. So we'll build on that. I think talking about access needs. So if that term is new to you access needs are anything that are required to meaningfully and fully participate in one's environment or community, everyone has access needs. And most that for the, for many people in our community in particularly the, the, the, at least one in five people whose brains work in ways that differ from the, the, the ways in which society has deep has deemed normative. It's not like they don't have our access needs met by the defaults of society. And so that's, that's where this conversation begins. But there are all kinds of access needs. This can be related to physical access needs related to the environment, for example, related to processing may relate to mobility, it may be emotional, like the communication related access needs, maybe related to the format of information, the speed, or the time of processing might be sensory related aspects of processing. Auditory processing is hard for me, most of the time, but it is nearly impossible in a really cluttered environment when there's a lot of visual or auditory chaos. It's very hard for me to take it information through my years. Interpersonal or social related access needs. For example, some, some people have the types of brains that really benefit from clear communication where someone says what they mean and means what they say, not all brains communicate in that way. That might be an access need for relationship. Maybe it relates to technology, maybe it relates to other, you know, medical, and there's all kinds of access needs. So I just wanted to present this framework. Anything that anyone needs for full and meaningful participation. So, a lot of times, people say, Well, I don't even know, I don't know what my access needs are like one of my one of my patients, or my favorite things that anyone's ever said in my life is this. I don't know what my needs are. I just know they're not being met. Yup. So this is, these are just some screenshots from an Instagram post that all brains belong did a month ago or so around you know how do you even figure out what your access needs are. So, step one might be a reflection of what's not working, because this probably relates to an unmet access need. Lizzie, would you be able to pop the Instagram post into the chat for this one. Cool. Alright, so like what drains my battery. When am I exhausted or really stressed out when do I shut down, when do I flip my lid, when do I feel really unsure and doubt myself. These all might be ways of getting at access needs that are not met. For example, one of my colleagues night earlier today we were talking about feeling really exhausted after a particular professional activity, and what was really revealed was well you know, actually, I think it's my headphones. The fact that they're like really squeezing my head and that the volumes never quite right like. This is not a person who maybe would have had an awareness that they have a sensory processing difference or a sensory related access need that is not being met. They only knew that they were exhausted. And so then it's about being curious. Step two, what's working. What makes me dopamine. When am I working within my zone of genius. And do I feel at ease or at the very least when do I feel less awful, maybe even neutral. What charges my battery. These may indicate that you have access needs that are being met. I may not know that their access needs, but you that this may be a clue of things that you actually need and might like set out to be seeking to replicate or ask for. Step three, what could be working better. What's my nervous system require to feel safe. In what ways do I have autonomy or agency. What changes I can make on my own without needing to involve others. You know, for example, and in the example I just gave with this conversation with my colleague like they're actually able to change their, change their headphones. They don't need to seek approval or permission or like the blessings of a supervisor. They do the thing and make this huge shift potentially in their ability to have their needs met. But then of course if that's not possible, then of course we're talking about requesting accommodations requesting adjustments to be made for access needs to be met, which is, you know, it's it's it's it's part of a legally protected right. How do I have a disability accommodated in reasonable ways. How do I balance my battery drain versus battery charge. These are all different, different ways to be thinking about this. Oh Steve your your even your, your question is are prompting me to realize that I skipped the line. So, how can I infuse dopamine into my life so dopamine is the brain chemical that is implicated in reward, pleasure, motivation, engagement. But there are some brains who require it for literally everything for motor functioning coordination for starting and stopping an activity for starting and stopping an idea. So, we could talk forever about dopamine, but the concept is that brains make their own dopamine, they also then churn through it while they're getting through the day. And so there may be reasons that someone doesn't have enough dopamine and often inability to carry out certain things they're trying to do may relate to not having enough dopamine. And we'll put some resources in the chat for now. So with that, we're going to go to our video, which is a collection of previous brain clubs on access needs we put this together for in December. We did our theme for December 2022 was brain club greatest hits for 2022. I'm, I bet we'll do that again. So, so this was our video from the greatest hits on access need brain clubs from 2022 that we're going to share now. All right, Sarah, take it away. So for, for a few months now, we have been talking about how, unfortunately, despite there being no default brain, there are a lot of defaults in our society right like defaults of like oh this is how healthcare is delivered this is what it means to like be an adult. This is what it means to be a worker. This is what it means to be a student anyway. And that's not true, because in fact we all have different brains that do things differently. What we don't want is we don't want to be in a situation where we are hammering to try to get that square peg to fit into the round hole and like, what happens you destroy the peg, and that is what happens to so many people. So, how this connects to access needs are that we all have access needs, access needs are anything that is required to meaningfully participate in one's environment or community. And as I said, we all have them. This might be physical access needs, emotional communication, you know, like, so all different types of access needs. So, often, we get the message that if we have needs, we are in some way needy and explicitly or implicitly sometimes often people get the message that we shouldn't have needs that it's selfish to have me like that's not a thing. That's a myth. And that is really hard, because when we think about full participation in our world and our lives, the social model of disability is about the barriers in the environment between the person and full participation. It's not about there being something wrong with the individual. It's about those barriers being placed. And so we want to have as few barriers to full participation as possible. And when we think about how this how this plays out in interpersonal relationships, I'm going to play a little, I'm going to throw in a little excerpt from a brain club we did in January called everyone flips their leg. Where, you know, there's things that that make us stress that are going to differ person to person and like context specific, like, if there's something in the physical environment, like, allowed sound, if I'm like well hydrated and well rested, I might not be as stressed as if I'm, you know, haven't done this things, or have like a huge cognitive load, or whatever, like with this business of the zoom and the link and the whatever and all that switching between things. If if a motorcycle drives by my house right now I'm going to flip my lid, whereas like I might have been okay a couple hours ago. So, when we get triggered when and borrowing from a model from Dr. Dan Segal Dr. King of Brayson from the whole brain child options brain and dancers brain when downstairs brain gets triggered. We don't get to pick what triggers us. And sometimes we forget that they're that we have interpersonal access needs it's not just about sensory processing or like how we learn it. It's about access needs in a relationship what does it mean for downstairs brain to feel safe. So, when we think about, since we all have access needs, often those access needs conflict with other people. And I might play this clip, I might just come back to it well maybe depends on if I can just unshare and reshare. Very God got to share the sound but it's not going to work. True love more than you all you know is how to shut people out. You asked for my blessing, but my answer is no. No. Excuse me your Majesty if I may be you may not. And I think you should go. The party is over. Close the gates. Yes. Nelson. No, no, wait. Give me my glove. Nelson, please, please. I can't live like this anymore. Then leave. I never do to you. Enough, Anna. No, why, why do you shut me out? What, why do you shut the world out? What are you so afraid of? I said enough. Um, here we have a relationship with two people with access needs. One is looking to assert them by taking space. One has foot on the gas with an access need to communicate right here now. Boom. That didn't work out so well. I'm curious. Anybody else ever experienced conflicting access needs an interpersonal interaction. Relationships are hard. Hi, Matthew. Are you are you raising your hand to say yes, I have conflicting access needs interpersonal interactions or did you want to say something? Yes, no, no, yes, yes, yes. Double yes, you know, yes, conflicting access needs, but also trying to interpret those needs in a way where the other party makes sense can understand you too as well. It's just it goes both ways. And to understand that together is one way to actually, you know, to understand what ideas and thoughts of, you know, addressing those access needs. Thank you. Totally. And especially when we have not. We're not in a culture where it is. Common for people to actually voice their access needs. Access needs are not implied. And in fact, people are not mind readers. Recently I was talking with some folks about friendships and how hard it is to make friends. And that they're constantly worried about the way their friends are going to respond to them and like worried that they're not going to be able to like, you know, that they're going to be judged. And that it's like, it's pretty stressful. So I'm wondering, I'm wondering how that, how that resonates with, with others. About worrying about, about the judgment in social interactions. Before me in the family, the way that I returned to regulation, the way that I, and bring my nervous system back into reading other people's attunement, reading other people's nervous system instead of being overwhelmed by my own. Whatever it is going on. The way that the best way for me to do that is to get down on the ground. Again, this is me and this is experiments of years of knowing how to attune. For me, it's, it's, it's squatting down close. It's putting both my hands on the ground for a second, the floor. So I'm, I squat and I'm low. There's something about the proprioceptive work, like I think because my glutes kick in so much, I'm like, oh, here's my body. And because I get a deflection, I'm like, oh, here I am. This is my contained little nervous system. Putting my hands on the ground feels strong. I feel like, yep, I am strong. I am a strong person. I can do this. So I'm building from the sensory system back into regulation. And I've practiced it enough over the years that I can do it fairly quickly in my nervous system. Those cues kick in safety for my, for my neuroception. And it's subconscious. It's, it is something our brains are always doing all the time, scanning the environment, scanning the interrelationships, scanning the internal relationship, the internal environment for safety. And we are geared for it. So once we feel it, once we find it, it's, it's what our system wants to go to. That homeostasis is where we want to be a cellularly, right? Yes. So for my nervous system, it's that it's getting low. It's getting grounded. It's softening my face, like actively saying, let your eyes soften. Don't create some expected emotion. So that like, that shame fear response might, might create this expected like, oh, I'm okay. Right. Like everything's fine. Can you tell this isn't really a smile? Like, but it's what we do because it's what we've been socialized to do. So actively neutralizing, softening my face. And then like something about the environment for me usually helps find the horizon, look at a tree root, some sort of cue to me that's like, there's no saber tooth tiger here. There's no gaping hole that's going to suck you into the hot melt and lava of the middle of the earth. This is solid ground. So you're describing that you begin with a bottom up strategy. You get into your body and you ground yourself, whatever that means to you, you ground yourself. And then you have access to your cortex where you are directly mediating your limbic response. Because now you have access to your cortex because you did that initial bottom up. Yeah, softening to take the edge off to like bring your cortex back online and then you go to that. I think a lot of people skip right to that or they try to skip right to that and they don't have access to their cortex and they, you can't skip it. You have to do something to access your cortex. And there's an element of like when you're in the thick of it, even if you're like already screaming and like actively flipping your lid, you, you don't have access to the impulse control to stop. You don't, you may not even be able to like metacognitive, metacognitively like assume out and watch yourself. You just don't have access to that. So it's really just like it's happening. Get to the ground. If that's how you ground on like something in your body. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's experimental for a while. It's trial and error to figure out what your physical somatic sensory system responds to. And then once that is kind of, once that's a cue of safety for your physical sensory being, it grows, it gets stronger. And sometimes maybe it needs tweaking, like, you know, when my knees can't squat anymore and hopefully not for another 20 years, I'll have to figure something else out. Right. The other thing is that if, if someone knows that they are, if someone knows that they are not going to be able to, to self-reg plan is a top down trying to use their cortex. Yep. One thing that I found helpful is to prepare ahead of time. What I'm wanting my cortex to do. Yep. Because if I can. Like ID and motor planet ahead of time, I'm going to be able to maybe access it as like automatic, like automatic loop bike in Poland, as opposed to trying to use it in the, in the moment, because then it becomes not an a stop, you know, impulse control stop. It's like, don't like, like puts on the gas already. Don't try to step on the break of stop screaming at your kid. It's, I'm going to go to my automatic loop. And so for me, that is like the, like I said before, the mantra of like the relationship, the relationship, the relationship is primary. Like whatever that, like, like, like a thought I can try. Even if I don't have full access to my cortex that I can, I can try that. I mean, it doesn't work maybe, but like it might work a lot better than like, I'm going to talk myself out of how this is not, this is okay. Right. Well, I mean, and this is also gets to some of the course of like, there's the unnumberable amounts of different brains. And so what you think, when we've talked about this, you think in specific word patterns always your directions are in go left at and to stop lights then to your brain does everything in that language space. And I do not. I do pictures and I know which rock is at the driveway that I drive into not where it is on the street in words ways. So I think that's also just a self-awareness piece of what works for your brain and language works for yours. I feel so seen right now. The language doesn't work great in my brain. So to start to do like an internal talk in the midst of feeling really dysregulated is just like, oh, that's really, that would be too much work. Yeah, yeah. And so it begins with self-awareness of like what, what actually harms you and maybe even developing an awareness of like your go-to patterns of how you negotiate life, even when you're like generally regulated enough. Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. Which then I mean gives you that base of being able to have the space for your family to feel safe and heard and seen. Because I mean the goal is acceptance and connection for all of us and that requires me also having that grace and acceptance of like I understand myself sometimes. So Luna and I have been discussing power lately because she's five and what's modeled for her like in video games or cartoons is like power over people and like power over people feels gross to me as a PDA or like I don't want people, I don't want power over me and I don't want to have power over people because it's gross. So like we watch a lot of my little pony where like the messages are that the people seeking power over they never prosper. It's the power of friendship, the power of connection, the power of co-regulation, which is like, you know, like a reciprocal power. Like it's just anyway. So like we've been talking about like just like the different kinds of power and where do we get power? Because I feel like the like transformation from like, you know, like the traumatic transformation toward narcissism because like, I mean, you can start off as, you know, like, you know, you're like a little kid and everyone has power over you and you like seek out to have power over. Like you don't have power. You seek your power. You want to claim your power. And like if you only know about power over, you go down that train, right? And like, if you don't have connection, like, ah, anyway, like, what do you think about this as a concept? Yeah, I think it really aligns to with the role of punishment in relationships and how power over that, the main leverage that you get if you have power over somebody is both controlling them and punishing them. And I think that like manipulating their behavior towards your good. And if they aren't aligned with that, then they deserve to be hurt for their transgression. And, you know, that's our world. Like we, we let literally live in systems built on that. And for our kids, they're, they're trying to make sense of what happens when something is transgressed. Like what do we, what do we do when a line is broken or like within the trust, like trust gets broken or connection gets severed. And we make mistakes basically. And so in a power over relationship, what happens around mistakes and all mistakes are punished. And in a power with or a power, like in a co-regulation relationship where any power doesn't even, the power is in the connection. Right. Totally. And cause I feel like, I'm like, I'm even hearing language from my five year old, like, like a thing that comes out a lot when, like I make a mistake. And then she'll say something like, you know, so like she might like, you know, and she'll be like, that's what you get for acts. And I'm like, where, where did you get? I like, like, I mean, and there's like a lot of things she says that I'm like, damn it, that came from me. But like, I don't say that that one doesn't come out. Maybe I think it, or like maybe I don't know. I don't even know, like, is it TV? Is it, I have no idea. I've no idea. Like my husband or like, I have no idea. I don't know. Like, she actually says that, but like, I think that it's just the narrative constructed from observations of the world. That's what you get for acts as opposed to late, you know, like we have a, a, a, a piece of occupational therapist on our board, who I like would love for you to meet. Hannah Blum, who, she talks a lot about the, the, the cycle of repair. And like, you know, so like, you know, we're all going to We're all gonna make mistakes, but like it's the repair that closes that loop. And like most of us grew up in a world where there was no repair, just like punish, punish, punish, flip your lid, which is normal to flip your lid, but like no repair. Yeah, absolutely. And the repair with yourself is what I see especially for my kids that they're externalizing, like that's what you get for is what they say to themselves too. Like when they make a mistake, then they're saying, well, of course your grownup is gonna ignore you or yell at you, because that's what you get. You, you messed up. And this sense that they deserve punishment is really hard to repair because our world is reinforcing that. And so it's kind of like, that's the cosmic repair work is repairing that relationship with yourself where you have the capacity to say, I'm a person who makes mistakes and I'm also a person who knows how to make things right. That's our family languages. We all make mistakes, but we know how to make it right. And that helps us to keep coming back to repair rather than choosing what's kind of an easier path, like punishment and isolation is, it's the dominant narrative to step outside of the punishment part. Because like, I think a lot of people who have grown up in a paradigm of like, you do the thing when the people with power over tell you to do the thing. And like when, when like zoomed out to be like, do you see how that's setting people up for like bad, dangerous things? And they're like, oh, oh, no, I never thought about that. Now I thought about that. I'm like, ah! You know, if you're designing a playground, not everybody, you know, needs to go follow the same path, right, to get to the top of the hill, but everybody has to have a path to get to the top of the hill when you're designing those things. And that kind of visual, because it's such a good visual in my mind, for me at least, and it was really helpful in thinking about everything. You know, the principle of universal accessibility, if I design this meeting workplace playground so that everybody can access it in some way, they don't have to be able to do every, you know, you don't not have a ladder to get to the thing because, you know, some people can't use ladders. You know, you just be able to design, so everybody had access and equitable access, right, and kind of removing the barriers, the visuals we all use. And as part of that, I think neurodiversity was a real big feature to that. Thinking about how somebody, whether they be, you know, autistic or Asperger's, or just have light sensitivities, or hearing sensitivities, or crowd sensitivities, how you could create spaces and places and programs and meetings that allow for that variety, or how you create a workplace that accommodates the variety. And in a way, we've really, we've tried to think about what we're doing externally, but also thinking about the people who do the work here and supporting them in that journey. Oh, that's so beautiful. And I think that, you know, sometimes people, when they have that visual of physical access, you know, as it relates to mobility related disability, visible disabilities, that maybe is, for some people, how they can begin to think about this lens. And then they can maybe take the next step to say, well, invisible disabilities, it's just as important to think about how everyone has to get to the top of the hill and to have multiple paths to be able to do that. So, you know, it's interesting because a lot of people who struggle in their workplaces, they don't know that they have an invisible disability. So they don't have language to talk about it because they don't know that's what's the barrier between them and the top of the hill. They may just know that they're struggling. And I think that when an organization is large enough to have like a human resources division, if the top down lens isn't, you know, oh, this person has this disability and they need accommodations for like, if the kind of the, that flag is not checked, it may not come into the conversation. It might be, you know, some organizations talk about, you know, we have disciplinary problems. We have difficult employees or like when I was chief resident during my training, we had, you know, difficult learners. Like really this was neurodivergence with barriers to access. And this is how this played out. So it's like a total lens shift. When we think about some explanations for why people are struggling, why people are dysregulated, why people are, you know, the conflicting access needs, they are about access needs. I think it really relates, Mel, what I, from my experience as a leader too, what I've seen is that it's, it's directly relevant to our, the way we treat physical healthcare and mental healthcare, right? So if you think about physical healthcare where you, we have access to that, right? We look health insurance, it's not affordable, but it's, but there's, it's accepted. And it's also not seen as a choice thing, right? If you get those type of physical ailments, it's not seen as you chose to X, Y, and Z, right? And what we're struggling with as a community around mental health and we don't give that the same time, right? So you, you take a sick day because you are physically sick or you take a sick day because you broke your leg. Everybody's like, right on, good for you. Yeah, rest up, heal up. If you are brave enough to say, I need a mental health day, right? I need to, I need, my brain needs to break. And that could be whether you have a disability or not. We don't accept that. Like it's, you know, toughen up, right? That's, that's the American like ideal, right? Is that you brain-wise be pushed through. And because we start with that. So if you start there, and that's for everybody with privilege and able-bodied and then you try and add in a disability to that. Well, now you're not only going up against accessibility issues, you're going up against cultural norms that are just incredibly difficult to overcome. And the disruption to the work environment and the way in which we expect people to show up nine to five Monday through Friday has changed fundamentally. And organizations that have not necessarily adopted that can and have not adopted the flexibility are the ones, in many cases, everybody's struggling for workforce, but you're compounding that issue by, you know, by not accepting and talking about that. And so, but, you know, you named the thing which is that in 2022, so many organizations are struggling to fill their open positions and they're struggling to retain their existing workforce. And, you know, I see that and I'm like, yeah, it's because you're not talking about neurodiversity and access, you could do like, but do you have thoughts about how that's connected from a CEO perspective? For sure, I think that the, you know, workforce challenges, many of them are rooted in, we still have old structures in terms of our work expectations as a society, right? And it's not that other countries have this perfect and right and many are way worse than we are in terms of accommodating. Some do it better and some of that is cultural. And, you know, examining, if we had the space and time capacity to examine, what are the systemic barriers that are keeping people from being part of the workforce? Because we all need to work, I mean, not the kids, they gotta go school and you gotta, but we all, you know, we do, it's part of society. It's not just a means to an end for myself, it's not just how I pay my rent or mortgage or I feed my family, it's how everybody does it. That's kind of the whole thing's based on that. And we don't all have the privilege of getting a tremendous amount of value from what we do, like you and I do, right? Of like, you know, there are, you know, we need people to do the X thing. And there's a need for that. And it's not always altruistic or rewarding in the same way. But if we think about how do we make it so that people want to work in our environments, whether it's making a thing, right? Or it's community building, or it's healthcare, you know? And when I say healthcare, I mean all of healthcare, mental healthcare, physical healthcare. It's, you know, you could probably think about how we're addressing a lot of these things. And there are so many barriers that keep people in the way of the employee. It's one of the things Working Bridges works a lot on with the social determinants that get in the way. So you've got childcare, housing, you know, transportation, food insecurity, all of these things and wages, of course, stacked on top of that, you then start getting into the issues of, well, what's the barrier in terms of my work environment? And what is expected of me in terms of how I'm showing up to do X thing that you've hired me to do? And so I think it plays a huge role in, you know, those intersectionality of all of those things are oftentimes what keep people from being part of the workforce being. So much of what you've said is about the way you see the world and that's what sets the tone of leadership is that you actually believe that we all do things differently and that you can shift the environment around so the people who work for you thrive. If you don't have that lens, nothing you're gonna do is gonna feel real to your people. But if you start with, we are all human and, you know, my colleagues talk a lot about human-centered design in terms of meetings and spaces and doing those things, you get a lot farther. I think you can have a lot more space. And, you know, maybe culturally, one of the big things that we miss and we lack in today's day and age is the ability to have a conversation with each other and be a little bit vulnerable on both ends of I don't know what I don't know. I wonder what stood out for anyone? Hey, Matt. Well, do Matthew and then Cynthia. Go ahead, Matthew. Yes, what stood out is, you know, understanding that, you know, there's a new, you know, what you call paradigm. There's a new, there's a new shift coming into making, into happening here and now. And what stood out for me was, you know, like, you know, Jesse Bridges, which I worked with on other things related to mental health and other things as, you know, what stood out is as a CEO, he understands and sees it. He's acknowledging there's a big, you know, culture, not culture shift, but culture war. Let's put that in perspective, that, you know, that the traditional systems that we're protecting are the same exact systems that is destroying us completely. And that's what he brought up, which, you know, which, you know, to me, it's like very, very fascinating of a CEO's perspective, you know, that saying to be able to get this person, to be able to work with this person, we gotta look at the culture. The culture in itself is, you know, what he's pointing out is exactly the system that's causing all this disparity, but also the inaccessibility, because culture assumes that you're gonna be at a top of your class. They assume that you're gonna be, have everything, you know, provided for you, or they assume that you're gonna be safe in this economic, you know, environment. And he's seeing that, looking at a different perspective, from someone else's lens, and do you know what? We gotta start, you know, opening up with each other, not just, you know, try to say my way or the highway. It's like about, you know, trying to open up with, you know, with compassion, kindness, but also the understanding of the individual and the individual access to me. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Cynthia. My microphone. I just wanted to, before I forget, and while we're on this topic of work and access needs, I wanna thank you guys, because, I mean, as you know, I reached out to you on Thursday desperately. I had a, or I don't know what day it was, Friday. Thursday I had a panic attack in work because it's a new job, it's like third weekend. Wasn't picking up on how to do things, the process of things, and my manager's a fast talker. And I was trying to figure out how am I gonna do this, how am I gonna do this, reached out and asked people, did a deep dive through all of your archives, the deal with workplace accessibility, and I did like a whole on tutorial of my channel the whole weekend. And I went in today and I was ready. I felt like I had my list of things to ask for. And, you know, like around 10 o'clock or so, there was a moment and I said, you know, do you have a minute? And I felt prepared, I felt empowered, and like, so I'm getting emotional and it's like ready for it. And then, and I'm asking her and I'm kind of going through the list and we talked about too many emails and like all the things that you guys mentioned. And then she said, would it be better if you, you know, if I wrote things down and I said, yes, that's perfect. She said, okay, because I was laying in bed thinking, you know, I wonder what's happening and why she's not getting this. So let's do a flow chart. And so she sat there and she wrote out a flow chart of all the things and all the processes. And I was just like, oh my goodness, if I had not asked and I just stayed there whirling and spinning and trying to figure it out by myself. So it really was like this complete empowerment but also getting permission and giving myself permission to ask and trying to release them what might happen. You know, it could go really bad or, and if it's, and as you said, like if it goes really bad, then maybe you shouldn't be there anyway. So I just really wanted to thank you guys for all the work that you do because I'm, whoops. I'm here to say it works. Oh, that has made my everything. That's amazing. That's why we do Brain Club. The whole idea is that these experiences are so common. So common and to make the difference between struggling and internalizing that struggle, blaming yourself for that struggle, as opposed to being able to zoom out and name it for what it is, which is that I have needs that are not being met. That's not on me. And that also now you have this vocabulary to talk about it. Oh, that's amazing. You know, I think that when people develop a way of talking about it, unless that turns into like a conflicting access need, like power over leveling or equalizing or like whatever you want to call it, if we can like stay out of that energetically but have like real conversations around access, it often really goes quite well. So thank you for sharing that, that's wonderful. Anything else standing out for anyone else who we haven't heard from yet around figuring out your access needs, communicating your access needs to other people or any adjacent concepts. Everything's connected to everything, of course. Steve says the vocabulary. I've been drinking from the vocabulary fire hose. Yeah, what a learning curve. And I think that the specific words used to describe concepts, like there's probably like any number of words or phrases to describe the concepts that we talk about in brain clubs. So if there's, you know, if the way a concept is processed by someone's brain and you have another way of thinking about it, like that's a great, that's great. So the terms we use are the terms that, you know, we have now over rehearsed neural pathways using those particular phrases, but there may be, there's any number of ways of talking about this. Anybody else wanna share any reflections? Leanne says, to me, what strikes home is honoring my access needs. I put so much pressure on myself with expectations that come from some unhealthy place. That's what I get for to myself. Yeah, and like, when we think about it, that's so not our faults when that's the narrative, because that's been the narrative for so long. Like that's why coming together, being with a community that is trying to reimagine all of it. Because when you surround yourself with people who are doing the act of reimagining and unlearning together, it becomes doable. Otherwise, if you're only surrounded by people that live in that neuro normative world that are like, yeah, you need to do the thing. Why don't you just do the thing, like everybody else? It makes it really hard to zoom out and be like, no. So the last clip that we played, which was from a past neurodiversity and employment brain club sets us up so nicely for next week's conversation on interdependence and work. So I look forward to seeing you all then. Oh, there's some comments in the chat. As I'm wrapping up, I'm sorry. Thank you so much for these. So Kelly says, I'm getting anxious about school starting. We just gotten to such a delicious summer routine, right? So shifts and routines for many brains are a predictable stressor. And so zooming out and saying like, well, what is it that is going to, what are my needs during this period of time? And like, how do we meet those? Steve says, I've been thinking as an educator about how we need to shift from function-based thinking. What is the function of that behavior? How can this function be fulfilled in a less obnoxious way to an access-based need thinking, which is not negotiable, still thinking through that. I just want to take that in. Amen to that, Steve. Yes. Understanding, you know, I think behavior, behavior is the body's way of communicating an underlying, you know, physiologic state of the nervous system. And so when you see a behavior asking why, what's going on here, is an appropriate first step. But it's like, let's think about what this may mean about an access need and how do we meet those access needs? Yeah, Lillian, and we'll post it again, those slides with the three steps, we made an Instagram post about that. And here we go, I'm gonna put it in the chat again. There you go. So that's where those three slides are from. All right, so with that, thank you all so much for coming and we hope to see you next week to talk about interdependence and work. Have a good week. Bye.